Communist Party of Great Britain - Draft Programme

3. Immediate demands

On the most basic level the development of capitalism in Britain creates the necessity among the workers to struggle against the effects of the capitalist system that confronts them. Even without communist leadership resistance will occur, albeit spontaneously and blindly. This is the unconscious expression of the fact that the workers have nothing to lose except their illusions and everything to gain through the overthrow of capitalism.

To succeed, however, this social movement must consciously oppose every violation of democracy and example of discrimination. Workers must defend every oppressed minority and elevate itself to a ruling class by winning the battle for democracy.

The demands we communists put forward are based on what the masses need if they are to live any sort of a decent life in Britain, They are not based on what the capitalist system says it can afford. Our intention is to provide a plan of action and at the same time make the workers aware of their power to refashion society so that it serves human interests. The formulation of our demands thereby connects today's conditions and consciousness to the aim of revolution and the establishment of socialism.

3.1 Working conditions and wage workers

In circumstances where capitalism is politicising the economic struggle of the working class, the communists demand:

• A five-day working week and a maximum seven-hour day for all wage workers. Reduction of that to a four-day working week and a maximum six-hour day for occupations which are dangerous or particularly demanding. The working day must include rest periods of not less than two hours.
• An uninterrupted weekly break of nor less than 60 hours for all wage workers.
• Equal pay for equal work.
• The abolition of overtime in its present form. In the case of emergencies and other such eventualities overtime must be voluntary, for only short periods and with at least double pay.
• A minimum net wage to reflect the value of unskilled labour power. This to be decided on the basis of what is needed to physically and culturally reproduce the worker and one child. The minimum wage to be used in the calculation of all other wage rates.
• A minimum of six weeks' fully paid holiday leave during the year.
• Insurance and other such payments to be made entirely by the capitalists and the state.
• Occupational training for all workers to be a legal obligation for employers.
• Child labour to be illegal before the age of 14. No more than a five-day week, no more than a two-hour day. Child labour to be banned in any industry harmful to children. Coordination of work and education under trade union supervision.
• All industrial courts, arbitration panels, etc to be made up of at least 50% elected workers' representatives.
• All workers must have the right to strike and the right to join a trade union.

3.2 Migrant workers

There are large numbers of workers who have migrated to .Britain in order to improve their lives. Immigration is a progressive phenomenon which breaks down national differences and national prejudices. It unites British workers with the world working class.

The bourgeoisie of .Britain uses migrant workers as worst paid labour and keeps them in that position by criminalising them through immigration laws, police raids and deportation orders.

The capitalist state in .Britain has an official ideology of anti-racism. That in no way contradicts the national chauvinist consensus which champions British imperialism's interests against foreign rivals and sets worker against worker.

Migrant workers are not a problem. The capitalists who use them to increase competition between workers arc. The reformist plea for non-racist immigration control plays directly into the hands of our exploiters. It concedes the right of the state to bar workers from entering -Britain. Capital moves around the world without restriction. Communists are for the free movement of people and against all measures preventing them entering or leaving countries.

It is in the interests of all workers that migrant workers are integrated. Assimilation is progressive as long as if is not based upon force. In order to encourage integration and strengthen the unity of the working class the following demands are put forward:

• The right to speak and be educated in one's own language. The right to conduct correspondence with the state in one's own language.
• No religious or separate schools.
• The right to learn English for all migrant workers and their families. Employers must provide language courses.
• The right to become citizens with full social and political rights of the country they have emigrated to for all workers who have resided in the country for three months.

3.3 The unemployed

Unemployment is an inevitable by-product of capitalism. Full employment can only be a temporary phenomenon in a system which reduces people to the mere possessors of the commodity, labour power - that is, objects of exploitation.

Especially in periods of crisis millions cannot profitably be employed and are therefore discarded. Maintained at below subsistence levels, the unemployed are used as a reserve army of labour to drive down general wage levels. Unemployment is not due to the policies or coloration of this or that government. The only way to eradicate unemployment is to end the system that causes it.

As part of the working class the unemployed must be fully integrated into the workers' movement. They must be made into a reserve army of the revolution.

The immediate communist demands for the unemployed are:

• The right to work at trade union rates of pay or unemployment benefit at the level of the minimum wage.
• No state harassment of the unemployed. Claiming benefit is a right not a privilege.
• Cheap labour schemes must be replaced by real training and education under trade union supervision.
• The unemployed must have the right to remain in or join trade unions as full members with equal rights.
• To the extent that they operate unemployed workers' organisations must be represented in the trade union movement - from trades councils to the Trades Union Congress.

3.4 Nationalisation

From the point of view of world revolution, programmes for wholesale nationalisation are today objectively reactionary. The historic task of the working class is to fully socialise the giant transnational corporations not break them up into inefficient national units. Our starting point is the most advanced achievements of capitalism. Globalised production needs global social control.

Communists oppose the illusion that nationalisation equates in some way with socialism. There is nothing inherently progressive or socialistic about nationalised industries.

Under definite circumstances, however, nationalisation serves the interests of the workers. Faced with plans for closure or mass sackings, communists demand that the state - the executive committee of the bourgeoisie - not the workers bear the consequences for failure.

Against closures and mass sackings communists demand:

• No redundancies. Nationalise threatened workplaces or industries under workers' control.
• Compensation to former owners should be paid only in cases of proven need.
• There must be no business secrets hidden from the workers. The books and data banks of every company must be open to the inspection of specialists appointed by and responsible to the workers.

3.5 Trade unions

Trade unions limit competition between workers, thus securing a better price for labour power. They represent a tremendous gain for the working class, drawing millions of backward workers into collective activity against employers.

Of course, left to itself, trade union consciousness is characterised by sectionalism and the hopeless attempt to constantly improve the lot of workers within capitalism. Communists openly seek to make trade unions into schools for communism. They do this by always putting forward the general interest, by fighting for workers' unity and by fully involving the masses in decision making.

Bargaining is a specialist activity. Consequentially the trade unions need a layer of functionaries. However, due to the passivity of most rank and file members and lack of democratic accountability, these functionaries consolidated themselves into a conservative caste.

The trade union bureaucracy is more concerned with amicable deals and preserving union funds than with the class struggle. Operating as an intermediary between labour and capital it has a real material interest in the continued existence of the wage system.

Within the trade unions communists fight against bureaucracy by demanding:

• Trade unions must be free of any interference or control by the state.
• No trade union official to be paid above the average wage of a worker in that particular union.
• All officials must be elected, accountable and instantly recallable.
• Workers should support trade union leaders only to the extent that they fight for the long term interests of the working class as a whole.
• One industry, one union. Industrial unions are rational and enhance the ability of the workers to struggle.
• All-embracing workplace committees. Organise all workers, whatever their trade, whether or not they are in trade unions. Workplace committees should fight to exercise control over hiring and firing, production and investment.

3.6 Councils of action

In any decisive clash of class against class, new forms of organisation which are higher, more general, more flexible than trade unions emerge. In Russia they have been called Soviets, in Germany rates, in Britain councils of action.

Democratically embracing and co-coordinating all who are in struggle, such organisations of struggle have the potential to become the workers' alternative to the capitalist state. Communists encourage any such development.

3.7 Workers' militia

Communists are against the standing army and for the armed people. This principle will never be realised voluntarily by the capitalist state. It has to be won by the working class developing its own militia.

Such a body grows out of the class struggle itself; defending the picket line, mass demonstrations, workplace occupations, fending off fascists, etc.

As the class struggle intensifies, the conditions are created for the workers to arm themselves and win over sections of the military forces of the capitalist state. Every opportunity must be used to take even tentative steps towards this goal. As the circumstances allow, the working class must equip itself with the most advanced, most destructive weaponry available.

To facilitate this we demand:

• Rank and file personnel in the state's armed bodies must be protected from bullying, humiliating treatment and being used against the working class.
• There must be full trade union and democratic rights, including the right to form bodies such as soldiers' councils.
• The privileges of the officer caste must be abolished. Officers must be elected. Workers in uniform must become the allies of the masses in struggle.
• The people have the right to bear arms and defend themselves.

3.8 The national question

As a general rule communists do not want to see countries broken up into small nation-states. Ours is the revolutionary call for humanity to shed the flag-waving imagined community of nation-states.

Communists are the most consistent internationalists and unreservedly denounce any tactical pandering to, let alone attempts to exacerbate, national tensions.

Communists want a positive solution to the national question in the interests of the working class: that is, the merging of nations. That can only be achieved through democracy and the right of all to fully develop their own culture.

Communists fight to secure the right of nations and nationalities to self-determination. Every historically constituted people should be able to freely decide its own destiny. They can separate if they so wish. Thereby they can also elect to come together or stay together with others.

3.8.1 England, Scotland and Wales

The British nation evolved from the gradual bonding of three nationalities - the English, Welsh and Scottish. Drawn together over many centuries by common political and economic experience, they now in the main possess a common language, culture and psychology.

The birth of the British nation objectively was a profoundly progressive development. Nevertheless, because it was carried out under the aegis of a brutal absolutism it was accompanied by countless acts of violence and discrimination.

As post-boom British imperialism was forced to turn inwards, and in the absence of a viable proletarian alternative, resistance in Scotland and Wales often took a national form. A mythologised past was deployed by nationalists, opportunists and Labourites alike to serve their own nefarious purposes.

Communists stand opposed to every form of Scottish and Welsh national narrow-mindedness. Equally we oppose every form of British-English national chauvinism. Ideas of exclusiveness or superiority, national oppression itself, obscure the fundamental antagonism between labour and capital and diverts attention from the need to unite against the common enemy - the British capitalist state.

While communists defend the right of Scotland and Wales to secede, we do not want separation. Communists want the closest union circumstances allow. That can only come about by fighting for full democracy. The peoples of Scotland and Wales cannot decide their own future through the monarchy and the Westminster parliament of the House of Commons and House of Lords. That is why we stand for a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales.

It is the proletarian internationalist duty of communists in Scotland and Wales to defend the right of the Scots and Welsh to remain with and achieve an even higher degree of unity with the English. As an equal proletarian internationalist duty communists in England must correspondingly be the best defenders of the right of the Scottish and Welsh peoples to separate. That in no way contradicts their duty to advocate unity.

3.8.2 Ireland

Ireland is Britain's oldest colony. In 1921 die Irish nation was dissected- A sectarian Six County statelet was created in order to permanently divide the Irish working class and perpetuate British domination over the whole island of Ireland.

We communists in Britain unconditionally support the right of Ireland to reunite. Working class opposition to British imperialism in Ireland is a necessary condition for our own liberation - a nation that oppresses another can never itself be free. The struggle for socialism in Britain and national liberation in Ireland are inextricably linked.

Communists in Ireland also have internationalist duties. They must fight for the closest spirit of fraternity between workers in Britain and Ireland and their speediest coming together. They must be resolute opponents of nationalism.

3.9 Peace

British imperialism has an unparalleled history of war and aggression in virtually every corner of the world. Though no longer the power it once was, it maintains large, well equipped armed forces in order to defend the interests of capitalism abroad and at home. Communists oppose all imperialist military alliances and ventures.

British capitalism is one of the world's main weapons manufacturers and exporters. It has a vested interest in promoting militarism. Communists stress however that the struggle against the military-industrial complex cannot be separated from the struggle against the profit system as a whole.

Communists do not call for this or that percentage cut in military spending. We are against giving even one penny or one person to the capitalist state's armed forces.

Peace cannot come courtesy of bodies such as the United Nations - an assembly of exploiters and murderers. Nor can it come about by trying to eliminate this or that category of weapons. It is the duty of communists to connect the popular desire for peace with the aim of revolution. Only by disarming the bourgeoisie and through international socialism can the danger of war be eliminated.

Communists are not pacifists. Everywhere we support just wars, above all revolutionary civil wars for socialism. Communists will therefore strive to expose the war preparations of the bourgeoisie, the lies of social chauvinists and the illusions fostered by social pacifism. These alien, bourgeois influences objectively disarm and paralyse the working class in the face of a bourgeoisie armed to the teeth.

3.10 Women

Women are oppressed because of the system of exploitation and the division of labour. Women's oppression has existed since the dawn of class society. The abolition of exploitation will mark the beginning of the emancipation of women. Therefore the struggle for both is interconnected.

Women's emancipation is nor a question for women alone. Just as the abolition of class exploitation is of concern to female workers, so is the emancipation of women of concern to male workers. The struggle for socialism and the emancipation of women cannot be separated.

Under capitalism women carry out domestic labour, such as housework, child rearing, etc, which is performed gratis. Given the technical possibilities to industrialise it, such work is enormously time wasting. It is also dull, demoralising and does not allow for any kind of cultural development.

Advanced capitalism has created the material prerequisites for the liberation of women. However, women cannot be fully emancipated until the disappearance of the division of labour without going beyond bourgeois right - that is, right based on work done.

In Britain women have won or been granted formal equality with men. The very existence of the capitalist system makes a mockery of that formal equality. Ac work, at home, in education, before the law, women are at all times faced with inequality, discrimination and oppression.

There has been a rapid increase in women's participation in the economy. Capitalism has an inherent tendency to increase both the number of unemployed and the absolute size of the working population. As a norm therefore women are exploited by capital as cheap wage workers and domestic slaves. Hence they suffer a double burden of oppression.

Women have their own problems and demands. These demands however do not conflict with the demands of the working class but rather they reinforce them. Communists demand:

• Turn formal equality into genuine equality. Socially, economically, politically and culturally there must be equality of opportunity. Open 24-hour crèches and kindergartens to facilitate full participation in social life outside the home: that is, trade unions, political organisations, workers' militia, cultural activities, etc.
• Open high quality canteens with cheap prices. The establishment of laundry and house-cleaning services to be undertaken by the state. This to be the first step in the socialisation of housework.
• Fully paid maternity leave three months before and six months after giving birth (the partner to be provided with six months' paternity leave).
• Free abortion and contraception on demand.
• Provision for either parent to be allowed paid leave to look after sick. children.
• Maximum six-hour working day for all nursing mothers.
• Decriminalisation of prostitution so as to remove it from criminal control. Prostitutes to be provided with special health care and other services to reduce the dangers they confront. Measures to give prostitutes wider social opportunities.

3.11 Youth

Youth are at the sharp end of Britain's capitalist decline. Young workers are in general not protected by trade union membership. Homelessness and unemployment are greatly disproportionate amongst the young. Training on official schemes is notoriously mediocre, designed more to massage government statistics than equip youth with the skills of the future. In the drive to cut costs basic education is under constant attack: with the standard of university education woefully diluted.

Youth are contradictorily fawned upon by advertisers, exploited as cheap labour and blamed for social decay. The system is in fact only interested in youth in terms of the cash register. Every ideal, every artistic talent is judged purely in terms of its ability to generate artificial needs in others. There are many who reject the twisted values of the system. But in despair they often turn to nihilism - itself turned into a commodity by capitalism.

The following demands are of crucial importance for youth:

• The provision of housing/hostels for youth to enter of their own choice for longer or shorter periods when they lose their parents or choose to leave them.
• Compulsory education up until the age of 16 and from then on within a fully democratic system. Education should be free and of a polytechnical nature: that is, rounded to include technical skills as well as academic.
• No religious schools, no private schools.
• Students over the age of 16 should receive grants set at the level of the minimum wage.
• The right of every young person on leaving education to either a job, proper training or full benefits.
• Remove all obstacles to the participation of youth in social life. Votes and the right to be elected from the age of 16.
• The provision of a broad range of sports and cultural centres under the control of elected representatives of youth.
• The abolition of age-of-consent laws. We recognise the right of individuals to enter into the sexual relations they choose provided this does not conflict with the rights of others. Alternative legislation to protect children from sexual abuse.
• The extensive provision of education and counselling facilities on all sexual matters, free from moralistic judgement, is an essential prerequisite to enable youth to develop themselves in all areas of sexuality and reproduction.

3.12 Pensioners and the elderly

People deserve a secure, dignified and comfortable old age. The needs of the elderly should be met fully by the state, and should be available by right. Our old people should not suffer the humiliation and anxiety of relying on means tests or charity.

The aim of these demands is to mobilise the working class as a whole to fight for pensioners' rights.

• No compulsory retirement. Right to retirement from age 60 for all workers - at 55 in unpleasant and dangerous jobs.
• The stare pension should be at the level of the minimum wage, and should be paid to everyone who has retired.
• Old people should have the right to decide how they live. There should be no compulsory institutionalisation. The state must provide what is needed to allow elderly people to live independently if they so wish, for as long as they are physically or mentally capable of doing so.
• Social clubs for the elderly should be democratic and subsidised by the state, nor charities.
• The comfort and dignity of the dying must be ensured at all times. Euthanasia and disposal of the body after death should be carried out according to the wishes of the individual.

3.13 Homosexuals

Homosexuals have often been scapegoated or persecuted. They can be portrayed as deviants who threaten the family - the basic economic unit of capitalist society. Homosexual rights is therefore a key demand.

Homophobic attitudes divide the working class and aid those advocating the authoritarian state. The working class needs to be mobilised in order to defend and advance homosexual rights.

Communists demand:

• Decriminalisation of all consensual homosexual acts. End police and state harassment.
• Lesbians and gays should be accorded the same rights in society as heterosexuals: that is, state marriages, artificial insemination for lesbians, adoption and fostering. No discrimination in custody cases on the grounds of sexual orientation.
• No discrimination in any area of employment.

3.14 Freedom of information

Knowledge is power. The British bourgeois state has always shrouded its affairs in secrecy. The real class interests and imperialist ambitions of the capitalists are thus kept from the eyes of the working class.

The working class demands openness in all state matters, not least as a preparation for running its own state. Communists demand:

• The affairs of the bourgeois state are conducted incomplete openness in all matters.
• Abolish the 30-year rule and all other forms of secrecy. Public access to all state files, cabinet papers, diplomatic agreements, etc.
• End all forms of censorship, both legislative and institutional.

3.15 Crime and prison

Crime can only be understood in relationship to society. In a class society crime is a product of alienation, want or resistance. Under capitalism the criminal system is an anti-working class, anti-popular system.

Against this communists demand:

• All judges and magistrates be subject to election and recall.
• Fines must be proportionate to income.
• There must be workers' supervision of prisons.
• Prisoners must be allowed the maximum opportunity to develop themselves as human beings. People should only be imprisoned within a short distance of their own locality - if nor, families must be given full cost of travel for visits.
• Prison life must be made as near normal as possible. The aim of prison should be rehabilitation, not punishment. Within prisons there should be a wide range of cultural facilities. Medical treatment must be via the general health service. There must be provision for daily visiting hours and weekly 24-hour conjugal visits.
• Worthwhile prison work. must be made available. It must be paid at full trade union rates and limited to seven hours a day.
• Cells must be self-contained and for one person alone.
• Prisoners must be allowed access to books, newspapers and periodicals of their choice. Incoming and outgoing letters can only be checked for contraband - they must not be read nor censored.
• Prisoners should have the right to vote in parliamentary and other such elections and to stand for election. Votes from prisoners to count within the constituency they actually live, not where they happen to originate.

3.16 Religion

Unlike previous oppressed classes in history religion can play no progressive role for the working class in its struggle against today's ruling class.

Nevertheless, though communists want to overcome all religious prejudices, we are the most consistent defenders of the individual's freedom of conscience and freedom of worship.

Communists therefore demand:

• Separation of the Church of England from the state. End all state subsidies for religious institutions. Confiscate all Church of England property not directly related to acts of worship.
• Freedom for all religious cults. Freedom for atheistic propaganda. Religious organisations and individuals have the right to propagate their ideas and seek. to win converts. Opponents of religion have the same right.
• End all state-sponsored religious propaganda and acts of worship. Religion is a private, not a state matter. Religion can be taught as a subject of academic study, not as a means to indoctrinate children.

3.17 Small businesses and farms

Small business people, including small farmers, form a thin petty bourgeois stratum in Britain. Carrying on an unstable, precarious existence, these people operate in the nooks and crannies of the monopoly-dominated capitalist economy.

Their limited profits often oblige them to work. alone or alongside their employees. A combination of the threat of bankruptcy and the aspiration to become big capitalists drives them to work: longer hours in worse conditions than many members of the working class.

Every downward oscillation of the capitalist economy faces the petty bourgeoisie with financial ruin. While the destruction of this stratum is economically progressive, the working class has a political interest to defend the petty bourgeoisie from the ravages of the anarchic capitalist economy, at the same time helping to raise the working conditions, security of employment and living standards of wage workers in farming and in small businesses.

Communists demand:

• Secure rights of tenure for owner-occupiers, small farmers and small businesses, with low rents.
• Cancellation of debts to banks arising from disproportionately high interest rates. Provision of low interest rates for small businesses.
• Guaranteed prompt payment of bills by big business to small businesses.
• Encouragement for the formation of producers' cooperatives through the provision of scientific and technical advice, research facilities, administrative machinery, grants for capital improvements, etc.

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